A machine-tool man builds a glider

Burkhart Grob was a pilot and a mechanical engineer whose family firm made machine tools. When he was told how long it took to get a new glider built, he was convinced he could do it faster and cheaper. In 1971 he set up an aircraft business and began by licence-building the Schempp-Hirth Standard Cirrus, more than 200 of them, the first in his machining workshop at Mindelheim. The approach was industrial rather than craft: glass and carbon fibre, moulds and repeatable processes. By 1980 Grob was turning out one and a half aircraft a day, about half of them for export.

A thousand Astirs

Its own first design, the G 102 Astir, flew in December 1974. Rather than chase the champions’ market, Grob aimed it squarely at gliding clubs with a keen price, and more than 1,240 were built. The two-seat Twin Astir and the Speed Astir followed, and in 1976 production moved to a new works at Mattsies airfield. In 1980 came the G 109, the world’s first all-composite production motor glider, which the RAF later flew for decades as the Vigilant T1 to give air cadets their first taste of flight. In 1996 Grob stopped making gliders altogether to concentrate on powered aircraft.

Into the stratosphere

Grob’s composite skills took it very high indeed. With E-Systems and Garrett it built the G 520 Egrett, a single-turboprop high-altitude surveillance aircraft that first flew on 24 June 1987 and set five world records. For the German aerospace agency DLR it built the Strato 2C, a twin-engine research aircraft with a 56.5-metre wing. On its 29th and final flight, on 4 August 1995, the Strato climbed to 18,552 metres, a world altitude record for a crewed piston-engined aircraft. The programme was cancelled the following year. Grob’s name also surfaced in the 1993 Amigo affair, the scandal over gifts that forced Bavaria’s minister-president Max Streibl to resign.

The jet that broke the company

Then came the jet. Sold in 2006 to a Swiss investor and renamed Grob Aerospace, the company secretly developed the G180 SPn, an all-composite light business jet with short-field performance. It flew on 20 July 2005 and won around 100 orders, but on 29 November 2006 the second prototype crashed just after take-off near the factory, killing chief test pilot Gérard Guillaumaud. Delays piled up, the lender withdrew, and on 18 August 2008 Grob Aerospace filed for insolvency, halting work that included building prototypes of Bombardier’s Learjet 85. Most employees were laid off in November 2008.

Trainers, and then Helsing

In January 2009 H3 Aerospace bought the trainer and support business and relaunched it as Grob Aircraft, restarting production in February. Its bread and butter became military trainers: the G 115, flown by the RAF as the Tutor, the G 120 and from 2010 the turboprop G 120TP, which serves as the Prefect in Britain and has been bought by Indonesia, Argentina, Bangladesh and Canada, among others. Grob says it has delivered more than 4,500 airframes. In June 2025 the German defence-AI company Helsing bought Grob to build uncrewed aircraft, and in September 2025 unveiled the CA-1 Europa combat drone concept at Tussenhausen.

Fabrieken

• Mindelheim workshop · Mindelheim, Bavaria — First Standard Cirrus built in the Grob machining workshop
• Mattsies works · Mindelheim-Mattsies Airfield, Tussenhausen-Mattsies, Bavaria — Main plant since 1976

Mensen

• Burkhart Grob · founder — 1926–2016; pilot and mechanical engineer
• Gérard Guillaumaud · chief test pilot — Killed in the G180 SPn prototype crash, 29 November 2006
• Wolfgang Gammel · CEO

Records en primeurs

• G 109: first all-composite production motor glider, FAA certified 1981
• Strato 2C: world altitude record for a crewed piston-engined aircraft, 18,552 m, 4 August 1995
• G 520 Egrett: five world records after its 1987 first flight